{"id":2349,"date":"2014-07-08T07:51:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T07:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2014-07-08T07:54:59","modified_gmt":"2014-07-08T07:54:59","slug":"sunchoke-helianthus-tuberosus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/sunchoke-helianthus-tuberosus\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunchoke – Helianthus tuberosus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunchoke is also known as Jerusalem Artichoke<\/em> although it originates\u00a0from the Americas and is a Sunflower and has no relationship to Artichokes at all. They are a\u00a0very tasty root\u00a0vegetable that are sadly under used and often badly prepared or cooked when they are used.<\/p>\n

They have a high inulin content (like Yacon)\u00a0that converts to fructose with some\u00a0storage time which is what gives them a sweet taste but it is not digestible by humans so you don’t get all the calories.<\/p>\n

However some people\u00a0need exposure to inulin over time to build up their digestive response or they can get a lot of intestinal gas. Apparently the more you eat foods like this with inulin in it – the more your system adjusts and those symptoms go away and it’s supposedly beneficial to your system.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Inulin<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jerusalem_artichoke<\/a><\/p>\n

They are a very easy growing sunflower plant that is usually up to about 1.5m plus in height with small yellow flowers in mid to late summer.<\/p>\n

You just need to give them some room in a sunny spot and you will likely literally never get rid of them.<\/p>\n

They can actually be a little weedy if left to themselves.<\/p>\n

If you give them a good deep soil with a good supply of moisture while growing they will get to a good size by the time you dig them up. \u00a0They can get to about 15cm long and quite thick if well grown.<\/p>\n

Make sure you give yourself some space to dig them up from the root zone which can go down to about 30cm below ground and maybe leave a good space around the bed so they don’t spread too much.<\/p>\n

Usually you wait for the stems to dry off and then the tuberous roots are ready to dig up.<\/p>\n

They provide a\u00a0great trellis system to grow other things on like beans or vines. They don’t seem to mind the competition and are very strong stems.<\/p>\n

There are a number of cultivars with various features like colours that range from the standard creamy white to a intensely blushed red and with various levels of smooth skin. Some can have many nodes and \u00a0rooting points which makes them a pain to clean and prepare for cooking. Pick a smooth one if you can get them.<\/p>\n

They get sweeter if you\u00a0store them for some time after harvest in a dark dry space as more of the inulin converts to fructose.<\/p>\n

They are really nice just eaten fresh and have a nice crunchy sweet fresh flavour if eaten finely sliced. The texture is almost like a crunchy apple when fresh from the ground. When they have been stored for some time they tend to get softer and sweeter.<\/p>\n

I would recommend that you try baking some of them\u00a0and with\u00a0that add\u00a0some finely sliced skin ‘chips’ quickly fried in a pan to a crispy texture and thrown on top for some variation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunchoke is also known as Jerusalem Artichoke although it originates\u00a0from the Americas and is a Sunflower and has no relationship to Artichokes at all. They are a\u00a0very tasty root\u00a0vegetable that are sadly under used and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-notes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/sunchoke01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ccXI-BT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2352,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/2352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}